Center for Community Progress and Land Trust Alliance Unveil Map Highlighting Collaborative Opportunities Between Land Banks and Conservation Land Trusts

New Tool Will Foster Land Bank and Conservation Land Trust Collaboration

WASHINGTON, DC – In a joint effort to foster stronger, more resilient communities, the Center for Community Progress and the Land Trust Alliance are pleased to announce the launch of a new interactive map for leaders in community revitalization. The National Land Bank and CLT Map identifies shared service areas between land banks, conservation land trusts and community land trusts to promote collaboration between these entities and maximize their unique but complimentary skillsets.

The National Land Bank and CLT Map offers a comprehensive overview of areas where the work of land banks, conservation land trusts and community land trusts may intersect. By identifying these potential areas of shared services, the map aims to encourage collaboration, allowing these organizations to leverage each other’s strengths to achieve common goals.

Land banks can use their unique powers to acquire, stabilize and transfer vacant properties to a land trust. Community land trusts can use those properties to create lasting affordable homeownership opportunities, while conservation land trusts can restore vacant land parcels to provide clean water, protect habitat for wildlife and plants, and help fight the impacts of climate change. Working together, these entities can help communities reactivate vacant, abandoned and deteriorated properties, protect natural resources, and provide quality affordable housing for current and future generations.

Today, there are few examples of effective, sustained partnerships between land banks and land trusts. However, these partnerships hold great potential, and together, land banks and land trusts can leverage each other’s strengths to support a more resilient and equitable future in neighborhoods across the United States.

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About Community Progress: The Center for Community Progress helps people to transform vacant spaces into vibrant places. Since 2010, their team of experts has provided urban, suburban, and rural communities battling systemic vacancy with the policies, tools, and resources needed to address the full cycle of property revitalization. As the only national nonprofit dedicated to tackling vacant properties, Community Progress drives change by uncovering and disrupting the unjust, racist systems that perpetuate entrenched vacancy and property deterioration. Community Progress has delivered customized, expert guidance to leaders in over 300 communities and provided hundreds of hours of free educational resources as well as leadership programming to help policymakers, practitioners, and community members across the country return properties to productive use. To learn more and get help for your community, visit communityprogress.org.

About Land Trust Alliance: Founded in 1982, the Land Trust Alliance is a national land conservation organization that works to save the places people need and love by strengthening land conservation across America. The Alliance represents more than 1,000 member land trusts and affiliates supported by more than 250,000 volunteers and 6.3 million members nationwide. The Alliance is based in Washington, D.C., and operates several regional offices. More information about the Alliance is available at www.landtrustalliance.org.